Everyone “knows” the Maasai as proud pastoralists who once dominated the Rift Valley from northern Kenya to central Tanzania.

But many people who identity themselves as Maasai, or who speak Maa, are not pastoralist at all, but farmers and hunters. Over time many different people have “become” something else. And what it means to be Maasai has changed radically over the past several centuries and is still changing today.

This collection by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists examines how Maasai identity has been created, evoked, contested, and transformed from the time of their earliest settlement in Kenya to the present, as well as raising questions about the nature of ethnicity generally.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Spear received his doctorate in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written histories of Zwangendaba’s Ngoni, the Mijikenda (The Kaya Complex), eastern and central Kenya (Kenya’s Past), and The Swahili (with Derek Nurse); and is currently completing a social and economic history of the Meru and Arusha peoples of Tanzania. Formerly at La Trobe University and Williams College, he is now professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Richard Waller lectures in the Department of African Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, having received his doctorate from the University of Cologne and his Habilitation from Bayreuth. He has published widely on Nilotic, Maa, Khoisan, and Bantu language history, including The Eastern Nilotes (1982), Towards a Comparative Study of the Maa Dialects of Kenya and Tanzania (1988), Patterns of Language Knowledge and Language Use in Ngamiland, Botswana (1988), New Perspective on the Study of Khoisan (1988), and Die Khoe-Sprachen (in press).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Series Page

Title

Copyright

Contents

Maps, Figures & Illustrations

Contributors

Acknowledgements

I. Introduction

Introduction

1. Dialects, Sectiolects, or Simply Lects? The Maa Language in Time Perspective

2. Becoming Maasailand

3. Maasai Expansion and the New East African Pastoralism

4. Aspects of 'Becoming Turkana': Interactions and Assimilation Between Maa- and Ateker-Speakers

5. Defeat and Dispersal: The Laikipiak and their Neighbours at the End of the Nineteenth Century

6. Being 'Maasai', but not 'People of Cattle': Arusha Agricultural Maasai in the Nineteenth Century

Introduction

7. Becoming Maasai, Being in Time

8. The World of Telelia: Reflections of a Maasai Woman in Matapato

9. 'The Eye that Wants a Person, Where Can It Not See?': Inclusion, Exclusion, and Boundary Shifters in Maasai Identity

Everyone “knows” the Maasai as proud pastoralists who once dominated the Rift Valley from northern Kenya to central Tanzania.

But many people who identity themselves as Maasai, or who speak Maa, are not pastoralist at all, but farmers and hunters. Over time many different people have “become” something else. And what it means to be Maasai has changed radically over the past several centuries and is still changing today.

This collection by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists examines how Maasai identity has been created, evoked, contested, and transformed from the time of their earliest settlement in Kenya to the present, as well as raising questions about the nature of ethnicity generally.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Spear received his doctorate in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written histories of Zwangendaba’s Ngoni, the Mijikenda (The Kaya Complex), eastern and central Kenya (Kenya’s Past), and The Swahili (with Derek Nurse); and is currently completing a social and economic history of the Meru and Arusha peoples of Tanzania. Formerly at La Trobe University and Williams College, he is now professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Richard Waller lectures in the Department of African Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, having received his doctorate from the University of Cologne and his Habilitation from Bayreuth. He has published widely on Nilotic, Maa, Khoisan, and Bantu language history, including The Eastern Nilotes (1982), Towards a Comparative Study of the Maa Dialects of Kenya and Tanzania (1988), Patterns of Language Knowledge and Language Use in Ngamiland, Botswana (1988), New Perspective on the Study of Khoisan (1988), and Die Khoe-Sprachen (in press).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Series Page

Title

Copyright

Contents

Maps, Figures & Illustrations

Contributors

Acknowledgements

I. Introduction

Introduction

1. Dialects, Sectiolects, or Simply Lects? The Maa Language in Time Perspective

2. Becoming Maasailand

3. Maasai Expansion and the New East African Pastoralism

4. Aspects of 'Becoming Turkana': Interactions and Assimilation Between Maa- and Ateker-Speakers

5. Defeat and Dispersal: The Laikipiak and their Neighbours at the End of the Nineteenth Century

6. Being 'Maasai', but not 'People of Cattle': Arusha Agricultural Maasai in the Nineteenth Century

Introduction

7. Becoming Maasai, Being in Time

8. The World of Telelia: Reflections of a Maasai Woman in Matapato

9. 'The Eye that Wants a Person, Where Can It Not See?': Inclusion, Exclusion, and Boundary Shifters in Maasai Identity